I'm the founding partner of Proteus International, and author of Growing Great Employees, Being Strategic, and Leading So People Will Follow. You can follow me on Twitter @erikaandersen. My websites are erikaandersen.com, and www.proteus-international.com. I'm insatiably curious. I love figuring out how people, situations and objects work, and how they could work better: faster, smarter, deeper, with greater satisfaction, more affection, and a higher fun quotient.

In the article, I was citing a study of over 7,000 leaders done by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. One quote from them, regarding their study: “…at every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows.”

The title of my post was intentionally provocative – I’m not actually convinced that women are better leaders than men. But I do believe that women are at least as capable of leading as men, and if that’s so, I wanted to explore why there are still so few women in senior leadership positions in business and government.

So here we are, a year later, and the statistics are pretty much the same: women hold about 15% of executive positions at Fortune 500 companies; about 18% 0f US congressional representatives are women; full-time women workers still earn, on average in the US, 82¢ for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. I still want to figure out why this is so and what we can do about it.

Most of the negative comments on my earlier post were attempts to discredit Zenger and Folkman’s data. Here’s a great little video someone sent me last week offering even more data from some very reputable sources:

But I suspect that anyone who feels compelled to respond to this post negatively won’t accept this data either.

And, actually, I’m not writing this post for them. With any issue having to do with unfair treatment of a group of people, points of view exist along a bell curve. That is, at any given moment, there are people at the top of the curve who are completely convinced that the group (women, blacks, gays and lesbians, the disabled, etc.) should receive both equal treatment under the law and equal treatment in terms of others’ expectations and and assumptions. At the other end of the curve, there are people who are completely convinced that the group (whoever they may be) is not entitled to equal treatment and in fact, is ”less than” and should stop whining about their treatment and acknowledge that this is the way things should be. (Most of my commenters on the previous post fell into this group.)

However, most people exist somewhere along the middle of the curve: they may not even be aware there’s an issue, or they may have inaccurate information. (For example, many people are surprised to hear that there is still a wage gap between men and women, or that only 12 of the Fortune 500 are run by women.)

I’m writing this post for them – for you, if you’re in that group. I’m assuming that you may have daughters, sisters, or wives whose success you support, or that you may be in a position to hire new employees for your company, or to promote existing employees. I’m hoping that by increasing your awareness of women’s abilities, and of the ongoing inequalities in the workplace relative to women, and by giving you some information to support that awareness, it might help you better support the success of all the women around you, including those most dear to you.

Information is power…and I want to be generous with the information that will help current and future generations of women achieve their potential.

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Thanks for the insightful post (loved the video!). Most of the senior men leaders I talk with don’t actually believe that men make better leaders than women. Most of my sponsors in my corporate career were men. I agree with you that this is not about “are women better than men or vice versa”.

The problem we should be solving for is how we retain talented women in organizations given the unconscious biases they face. Many opt out at very senior levels. I wanted to share a post I wrote about this to see if you are seeing this in your work with senior leaders and whether the male CEO’s you work with see this issue.

Really great and thoughtful post, Henna – I love the questions you raise. I could relate to them very personally, as well: I started my own company 23 years ago as an act of “self-actualization,” and have always striven to create a place where my colleagues (male and female) can have the same experience.

This is a great post and the research is certainly thought provoking. What frustrates me is that this conversation has to happen in the first place – that there are specific professional development streams for women, women-only MBAs, the perceived need to equalize treatment through special treatment. But as long as these conversations keep happening, posts like these are necessary.

The post ends by stating that it is written for women, and the men who support women, in hopes of enabling the success of females. But this type of article is for the benefit of men and organizations too. As the video shows, diverse leadership is better for everyone, not just the women in leadership positions.

We have a bit of a misunderstanding: I didn’t say that I was writing the post for women, but that I was speaking to the people who “exist somewhere along the middle of the curve: they may not even be aware there’s an issue, or they may have inaccurate information.” That is, rather than speaking to those who are already convinced, or those who will likely never be convinced (the ends of the curve), I want to speak to people in the middle – men, women, black, white, gay, straight, etc. I want to share this information with those who may not even be aware that business is still not a level playing field for men and women.

I 100% agree with you that this kind of information needs to be spread as widely as possible!

There are some women leaders who are better at leading a particular department, company, small business, etc. Just as in some cases there are male leaders who are better. Some women leaders are terrible, some male leaders are terrible. It isn’t a claim that women as a gender are better than men–or vice versa. It is about equal opportunities within the workplace.

I think we’re in “violent agreement.” ;-) I was saying (as I believe you are) that I don’t believe women as a group are better leaders than men as a group. But I do believe – as I said – that women as a group are at least as capable of leading as men. And therefore – as you say – the important issue is to provide equal opportunities for that fact to be demonstrated.

Thank you for this post. It’s very timely – for the past few weeks several of my colleagues who write about leadership have been debating the merits of speaking up and pointing out the apparent disconnect between the statistics you cite on female leadership capability and the appearance of women on various “lists” – be they Top Leadership lists, best-seller lists for management books or Best Leadership blogger lists.

As you point out – speaking up, no matter what group you represent, has potential adverse consequences. And, as your post points out, people will always take issue with “facts” being portrayed. It’s easy to get sucked into debating the merits of research methodology and completely bypass the real issue. That’s why I appreciate that you are addressing belief systems as well. That’s where the real work must be done.

Agreed. As long as people unquestioningly accept their historical biases (about women or any other group), things will change very slowly. So “speaking up” is key. And doing it in a collaborative, respectful, thoughtful way creates (generally) the highest likelihood of change.

Admittedly I was provoked. As an integrative management consultant based primarily in Germany, I think that your headline would have been more informative and powerful had you written, “Integrated teams make us all better leaders: it’s a fact”. In order to turn the curve on the non-productive management vs. leadership, women vs. men discussion, we need to start thinking in terms of management and leadership; women and men. Words are indeed powerful. We can affect change by using them wisely. I couldn’t imagine your headline substituted with any ethnic or religious group in place of ‘women’. People rock ;)

PS Primarily US-based studies and stats, esp. those of HBR, often need cultural translation to be useful in other countries.